


Temporary Truces

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Community: sixathon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Peri need to persuade the Rani to hitch a ride with them, just this once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temporary Truces

**Author's Note:**

> Written for femme_slash_fan in the 2013 Sixathon.

The argument had been going on for some time. For once, Peri wasn’t an active participant – and, as a bystander, she’d rapidly become bored enough to turn away and start examining the local plant life.

“I wouldn’t touch that, if I were you.”

Peri lifted her head to find the Rani closer than she liked, watching her as she reached out a hand towards something that look vaguely cactus-like, only black. 

“Not unless you want to spend the next ten hours in excruciating pain,” the Rani continued. “It doesn’t bother me, but I imagine the screaming would grow extremely tiresome. I don’t suppose the Doctor would have the sense to let me put you out of your misery, either.”

“Oh,” said Peri, and pulled her hand back, but as slowly and casually as she could. The Doctor was standing further away, glaring at the pair of them. “I mean, I wasn’t going to, but thanks. I think. Look, can’t you two come to _some_ sort of agreement?”

The Rani glanced over at the Doctor, and shrugged, indicating the matter was one of complete indifference to her.

“Temporary truce? Agree to disagree?” Peri’s tone grew less hopeful.

The Doctor strode across to join them. “The point is that I cannot and will not allow this irresponsible, interfering so-called scientist to remain on this primitive planet, especially not if she persists in building that anachronistic contraption – and I’m quite sure, using the locals for her latest experiments in the process.”

“As I’ve been trying to tell you,” the Rani said in irritation, “I can’t leave this benighted place _unless_ I build the dimension oscillator. If you’d only get out of my way, I’d be gone by now.”

“Leaving a rather large hole where we’re now standing,” said the Doctor. “Oh, yes, Rani! I am aware of the design flaws in those machines _and_ why they were banned in no fewer than sixty-seven solar systems!”

“Regardless, it’s no concern of yours.”

“As I have told you rather a considerable number of times already, I can simply give you a lift and we can avoid any unwanted planetary destruction for today at least.”

“Yes, and hand me over to _them_ , I shouldn’t wonder. I can’t trust you, Doctor.”

“I assure you, I am not going to hand you over to the Time Lords, even if you richly deserve it.”

“Doctor!” said Peri, not because she didn’t agree, but because she was thoroughly tired of an argument that she didn’t get to join in. Plus, the flora was apparently vicious, in addition to not being very pretty and that didn’t leave a whole lot else to do round here.

“If I promise to take you straight back to this current home planet of yours, would that satisfy you?” the Doctor asked. “I am, after all, well known for keeping my promises.”

The Rani gave him a glare. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“Well, if you will spend too much time with the Master –” The Doctor gave a shrug. “Although, on the other hand, I suppose it does depend on where that is and what new devilry you were planning this time.”

The Rani raised an eyebrow. “Devilry? How very primitive of you, Doctor. But then you never have had any real appreciation of science.”

“That is nonsense. Just ask Isaac Newton.”

“In short, Doctor – get out of my way and let me finish working on this device before I’m forced to kill you. Don’t think that I won’t if you make it unavoidable.”

In the interests of not spending the rest of her mere human span on a barren planet with two near immortal beings who couldn’t agree about anything, Peri decided to take a hand.

“May I?” she said, looking across at the Doctor.

The Doctor frowned in return.

Peri rolled her eyes at him.

“I suppose I don’t see why not,” he said and wandered off, apparently examining some rocks with intense interest. He might even have been talking to one of them.

The Rani gave Peri a cold glance. “He’ll have me shut away somewhere.”

“I know that’s what he _should_ do,” Peri said. “But he won’t. Not if he promises, and anyway – there’s something else.”

“Something else? What do you mean, girl?”

“It’s Peri, thanks. And, okay, I’ll tell you, because he won’t explain, but, you see, there’s something he could use your help with. So you’d be paying for your fare, if you want to think of it like that.”

The Rani ceased looking beyond Peri to the Doctor and gave her her full attention for the first time. “He wants my help?”

“Well, you are supposed to be some sort of genius, right?”

“You could say that,” said Rani, although her tone suggested that she never would.

Peri ignored the other’s unenthusiastic response, and ploughed on: “There’s this problem with part of the TARDIS. Something he took apart and now he can’t put it back together the right way, though he’ll never admit it.”

“Hardly my field,” said the Rani, with a shrug.

Peri said, “Yeah, but you might have some idea?”

“I suppose I would be better than him, that much is true.”

“I think so, too,” said Peri, getting round to an attempt at flattery.

The Rani gave her a sharp look.

It was Peri’s turn to shrug. “I don’t have to _like_ you to think that, do I?”

“Very well,” said the Rani, eventually, “as long as he makes that promise, I suppose I could come with you. This planet’s so backward, I’m not sure even I can make a working dimension oscillator out of the limited materials available.”

*

“Well done, Peri,” said the Doctor as the three of them were finally inside the TARDIS console room. “Dare I ask how you reached an agreement, or will it make my hair stand on end?”

Peri edged nearer to him, out of earshot of the Rani, who was busy checking the co-ordinates on the console, in case of a trick or incompetence on the part of the pilot, and providing a running commentary on the wretched state of the Doctor’s time machine. “Okay, but you have to promise not to yell.”

“That, Peri, is not an encouraging beginning. Besides, what do you mean, ‘yell’? I never yell. I may occasionally – at need – raise my voice to an acceptable level of –”

“Okay, just don’t get annoyed, then.”

“Perpugilliam, what have you done?”

“You know that thing you’ve been working on – the what was it –?”

“If you mean the secondary temporal argonical convection unit, I suggest you say so.”

“Whatever, Doctor. Anyway, I told her you were having trouble with it, and you – well, that you needed her help to fix it.”

“Help? I – _I_ – needed help?”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Peri, as I told you, I may have been taking some time over the repairs, but that’s purely because it’s a pastime – I might even go so far as to say an art. The TARDIS is a sensitive being, repairs can’t be rushed.”

“But you can pretend you do so she doesn’t make any more fuss, right?”

The Doctor put an arm round her. “Pretend? My dear Peri, I am, as it happens a noted thespian who has appeared in a not inconsiderable number of theatres in various corners of the universe. I once acted opposite Sarah Bernhardt, no less. And on my last visit to Drury Lane, Garrick said to me – as I was helping him out with a sticky situation during a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream –”

“What? No, wait, don’t tell me – he’d never seen anything to equal your Bottom?”

The Doctor treated her to a long, reproachful stare, before he eventually said, “Yes, Peri, I believe I can _pretend_.”

*

Peri sat down in a chair and watched the two of them bickering over the damaged circuit. She still didn’t trust the Rani not to try something, so she wasn’t going to take her eye off the pair of them. 

Funny though, she thought, those extremely complicated practically-an-art-form repairs suddenly seemed to be coming along a whole lot quicker. And, what was more, when they finally landed, the TARDIS had stopped making that awful juddering that the Doctor had maintained was purely due to the nearness of an asteroid belt the first time, a loose screw the second, and a safety exercise to see if she had her safety belt handy the last. 

You’d almost think, Peri thought with a grin that she did her best to hide, if you didn’t know better, that the Doctor hadn’t needed to do any pretending at all.

*

Out on the planet, Peri stopped to examine a tall and very striking flower. It was partly orange, partly pink and partly some colour she didn’t even have a name for. She reached out a cautious hand.

“You seem have a knack for heading straight for the more lethal plant life,” said the Rani from behind her. “Touch that and it’ll take your fingers off.”

Peri raised her chin. “Hey, I’m a botanist. I was thinking about adding it to my collection. Not that I could ever show anyone back home, of course. But I’d have it. I’d know, and that’s something.”

“I see,” said the Rani, and glanced back at the flower. For once she didn’t seem to be sneering. She leaned slightly towards Peri, and nodded at a smaller plant just beyond. It had petals that were star-shaped and somewhere between blue and grey and purple. “You should be safe enough with that, if you want something to study. It has some fascinating properties – if, of course, you’re intelligent enough to work out what they are.”

Peri turned her head, but the Rani still didn’t seem to be laughing at her. “Thanks,” she said, unwillingly, but genuinely. 

*

“Won’t she just cause trouble here instead of there?” Peri asked, as she and the Doctor walked back to the TARDIS together, having seen the Rani back to the camp where she was currently working, and had left her TARDIS in the shape of a large rock (because some people could get their chameleon circuits to work). “Shouldn’t we hang around and check?”

The Doctor sighed. “I gave my word, Peri. At least this is an isolated planet, and the Rani does seem to have some concern for her current projects, whatever they may be. If she’s based here, at least she won’t be trying to blow the planet up.”

“It doesn’t seem right, though. What are we, the universe’s delivery guys for megalomaniacs now?”

“ _Peri_.” No one could put more expression of reproach into those two syllables than the Doctor.

She shrugged. “Okay, okay. And hang on.”

“Why?”

“I want one of those flowers over there – for my book.” And maybe, she thought, in remembrance of a moment of fellow scientific feeling in an unlikely place.

*

Peri returned, with one of the unusual blooms in her hand. “Okay, now we can go.”

“And, as it happens,” said the Doctor, reverting back to their earlier conversation as if it had never ended, sounding hurt, “I was playing Puck on that particular occasion.”

Peri threw him an amused look. “Yeah, but admit it, you walked right into that one.”

“The anecdote could use some work, I suppose,” said the Doctor, and then gave her a grin, before putting his arm around her. It was the equivalent of an apology from him, she knew. “And,” he added, “we could come back in a year or so – ensure the planet still exists. How does that sound?”

“Sounds great,” said Peri. For a moment there was nothing but harmony between them, but then she couldn’t help adding: “Except that I know we’ll only end up in fifteenth century Spain or somewhere instead.” 

The Doctor gave her a look. “Or, Peri, I could leave you here to keep an eye on her!”

“We’ll try your way.”

“Thank you, Peri.”

And the TARDIS dematerialised with distinctly less noise than it had been making lately, despite the Doctor’s doom-laden mutterings about there being no telling what damage the Rani’s meddling might have done to his poor ship.

Peri hid her smile in the flower.


End file.
